True Colors at the Guggenheim

Newsday ran a great feature yesterday about the current agonizing over what color to paint the Guggenheim, once they finally get the scaffolding off the net-shrouded hulk. (The New York museum is now undergoing much needed restoration.) Here's your chance to vote on which Benjamin Moore color you prefer: the old, familiar London Fog or the possible new choice, Powell Buff (said to have been the hue originally chosen by Frank Lloyd Wright).

In the Newsday article accompanying the swatches, Karla Schuster reports:

[New York City's] Landmarks Preservation Commission, which must approve changes to the museum's exterior, may settle the question as early as this week.

Four years ago, a similar quandary faced the restorers of the structure that is arguably Frank Lloyd Wright's most iconic work, Fallingwater in Mill Run, PA. As I wrote in the Wall Street Journal at that time, frequent repainting had made it "difficult to uncover the exterior's original color and texture." Pamela Jerome of the New York firm, Wank Adams Slavin Associates, whom I met while she was analyzing paint samples onsite at Fallingwater, is also among those overseeing the Guggenheim project.

Apparently, the exterior painting of Fallingwater was finally being done just this past summer: The Fallingwater website (which includes a photo of painting-in-progress) tells us:

Although it appears to be noticeably darker than the color many have come to associate with the structure, the paint actually more closely represents the original color Frank Lloyd Wright selected in 1936.

Actually, Wright had originally wanted to swathe the house in gold leaf, but finally settled for the color of "sere leaves"---an apricot-tinged ochre.

That's a better description of Powell Buff than "yellow," which is how Newsday describes the color being considered for the restored museum. Trouble is, you can't really assess that color from the digital image in Newsday's poll. It's really much warmer.

True Wright buffs who want to view Powell Buff should head over to the local Benjamin Moore emporium and pick up the color card for HC-35. Better yet, go to the Guggenheim, where, as seen in the video accompanying the Newsday article, adjacent applications of the familiar color and the possible replacement color can be viewed firsthand.

Actually, if you look at the above photo of the Guggenheim, from the museum's own website, it already appears to be in the Buff.